About us

The Principal of The Bottom Line Consultancy is Ray Fox.

He is sixty four years of age. He originally qualified with a B.Sc. (Hons.) degree in Behavioural Science (specialising in Industrial Psychology and Human Behaviour) from the University of Aston in Birmingham.

After graduation, he studied for and completed the examinations for The Institute of Chartered Secretaries and Administrators. He is a Fellow of the Institute (FCIS). Following that, he studied for and obtained a Diploma in Company Law and a Diploma in Company Secretarial Practice from the School of Accountancy and Business Studies.

For eight and a half years [from 1979 until 1987], he was the Company Secretary of a £50m turnover engineering company.

In 1987 he joined Dun & Bradstreet, a US$3B turnover company, as their UK Company Secretary.

Over the subsequent seven years, he was promoted to Company Secretary of D & B Europe, then the D & B Group and was subsequently appointed as their UK Director of Legal and Pensions Services. He was also Company Secretary of D & B Group’s Pension Plan responsible for all administration and £100M of Pension Fund investments. He left D & B in 1994 to set up his own Consulting Practice.

For over twenty years, he has been running a very successful marketing consultancy specialising in the Legal profession. To date, he has worked with over 772 Solicitors’ Practices, Law Firms, Patent Agents and Licensed Conveyancers, both in the UK and overseas. His support for the Legal profession has tended to fall into one of four broad categories:

Helping them generate more Clients

Helping them sell, merge or value their Practices

Helping them acquire other Practices

Helping them with staff recruitment

As at today, he has worked with over Four Hundred and Eighty two Practices in categories 2 and 3 above.

His experience has come from being directly or indirectly involved in the disposal of somewhere between 120 and 125 different Solicitors’ Practices over the past twenty years.

During this period, he has worked with “High Street” Practices, Major City firms, large provincial practices, Sole Practitioners, Multi-site Practices, Multiple Partnership Practices, as well as Practices that have been predominantly Conveyancing, Litigation, Immigration, Criminal, Company/Commercial, Employment, Intellectual Property, Matrimonial, Personal Injury, Legally Aided, Pensions, Social Housing, Debt Collection, etc.

He has worked with Practices where the Principal has died, where the Principal is dying, where the Principal is retiring, where the Principal is relocating, where the Principal is emigrating, where the Principal has had a nervous breakdown, where the Principal has been committed to an institution, where the firm is struggling financially, where a Partner is leaving and the remaining Partners wish to acquire the departing Partner’s equity, a Partner is joining and wishes to acquire equity, where the Partners wish to dissolve their Partnership, where the Partners are in dispute with one another, where a Court has ordered a valuation for dissolution purposes, where the Partners are considering selling all or part of their Practice, where the Partners are looking for a goodwill valuation for the purposes of incorporating into an LLP or LTD, where the Principal is being divorced and their spouse is looking for a goodwill valuation for divorce purposes, where a Practice is being sold to a larger Firm, etc. Some years ago, he acted for a Solicitor who had to wind up her Practice as a result of being rear-ended in a motor accident, the consequence of which was that she was unable to continue working due to a whiplash injury and his valuation was the basis of her insurance claim against the other driver. He has also acted for a Firm who had dismissed one of their Partners for attempting to murder and then maliciously wounding her spouse. He has acted for both buyers and sellers.

In addition to the above, he is a Founder Member and Director of Core Legal, [see www.CoreLegal.net] which is a networking organisation of professional companies all of whom provide specialist support to the legal profession.